“How could you lose with a strong team like that?”

“We were never good enough on that day”

“Who did they have in their team?”

“A guy called Treva King.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You will, I promise you!”

This was the explanation from coach Trevor Vanderputt, an Anglo-Indian, to his Western Australia Hockey Association bosses after the strong Western Australia lost the title contest to Queensland in the National Colts Championships in 1976. (Quote courtesy: Trevor Vanderputt’s eminently readable book, Hockey’s Odyssey: From Dhyan Chand to Charlesworth).

The skillful left-half went on to represent Australia for many years and won a World Cup gold in 1986.
Many coaches whose teams lost to India in the 2001 Junior World Cup at Hobart would have said the same about Ignace Tirkey to their evaluators. It was one of those rare occasions when an unheralded minnow churned out extraordinary stuff for his country for a defining moment to dawn.

Ignace, who made international debut a year after his younger brother Prabodh Tirkey had made a name for himself as the captain of the title winning Sub-Junior Asia Cup team, was the silent hero at Hobart when India won its maiden Junior World Cup at Hobart.
His performance might have got blurred by Deepak Thakur’s double hat-trick and all that, but certainly was not lost on the team. When the victorious team returned to India, coach Rajinder considered his performance as “simply excellent”. At this writer’s request, most of the winning team members gave the names of three Indian players whom they felt were the best at Hobart and Ignace was the only player in almost everybody’s list.

With such high praise coming from coaches and players, the task of Hockey Year Book to identify its Annual Award Winner was made easy, like in 2001. Such was Ignace’s game at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in 2001, where he made his senior debut, that the usually tight-lipped coach Cedric D’Souza too started singing paeans of the new, adivasi (tribals) star.

“He is the find of the Tournament,” he told a Malaysian daily. Cedric does not open his mind on individual players. Ignace was a rare case and he merited such special adulation.

Within 50 days from the epoch making Hobart success, India won the inaugural Champions Challenge Cup at Kuala Lumpur. Indian coaches claimed their search for a permanent left-half was over with the arrival of Ignace. That win gave India a berth for the 2002 Champions Trophy.

Ignace earned his India A colours in February 2001 in the Akhbar el Yom Cup in Cairo, Egypt, and played the Samaranch Cup three months later — India won both the titles — before making his mark in the Sultan Azlan Cup, the Junior World Cup and the Champions Challenge Cup. India clinched the title in four of the five tournaments he figured in that year. What a great beginning for an illustrious career!

Against the backdrop came the disaster in Kuala Lumpur during the 2002 men’s World Cup. It was the first occasion for the Junior World Cup heroes, who formed bulk of the side, to taste sequence of defeat on a World stage. The lessons were promptly learnt. A little later, their Junior World Cup coach Rajinder took charge of the senior team. Ignace was among the few who played all the senior tournaments in 2002 and 2003. Such was the level of confidence he evoked in his coach.

Ignace was evolving and the signs of the transformation were well evident for the watchers. Two Champions Trophies and an Asian Games experience moulded the youngster into a seasoned capaigner. The lion-hearted lad took many blows all over body in containing the naturally endowed right wingers, but rarely did he lose his cool.
Meanwhile, he grew from a solid but soft left-half to a daring, if not an attacking, midfielder. During the training camps, it was not an uncommon sight of Rajinder egging him on to play up front frequently. At times, Ignace himself tried to score in the circle. His over-enthusiasm appeared a bit too much for a left-half against the backdrop of galaxy of strikers in the present Indian team. But this trait stood him in good stead to give India a last gasp victory at Wollongong, a suburb of Sydney, against Australia in the HA Men’s Challenge Cup.
Ignace saved India from a sure defeat with a goal 35 seconds from the hooter. India thus drew the opener 3-3 and later went on to win the finals 5-3. It was goal of a similar nature in the 2003 Asia Cup final against Pakistan that made Ignace an instant hero. He was badly injured in the encounter against Pakistan in the league and had to be removed from the sidelines on a stretcher. That spurred him to outperform when India met Pakistan in the final four days later.

Wearing a bandana to hide the stitches on his right forehead, Ignace nullified the effect of rival’s left-half and famed Waseem Ahmed. A great midfield play from India blunted the Pakistan forwardl